[T]he superego, for Lacan, must be seen as inducing, commanding jouissance. The superego can thus be seen as what effectively binds law and enjoyment. It ensures that the Symbolic ego-ideals of a society—of the Other—are effectively implemented and taken up as passionate investments. Consider, for example, the disdain that so often accompanies reports of political corruption in Africa. The fact that such charges may well be justified in no way prevents such a speaking position from channeling racist jouissance. We might consider also the moral outrage that accompanies the many appalling news stories we are daily exposed to (reports of the hubris and greed of Wall Street, of mass-scale environmental pollution, the daily misdemeanors of Donald Trump, etc.). While there is much here rightly deserving of interrogation, it is also true what makes such stories newsworthy is their capacity to induce enjoyment. This, in many instances, is what stirs us into action: the jouissance invoked by such accounts, a jouissance that is combined with less honorable sentiments (hate, the desire to see perpetrators punished, etc.). The gratification of these potent affects underlies our cravings for justice. This profound connection between enjoyment and ego-ideals, and, as importantly, the superego, makes it clear that jouissance, certainly as it occurs within the social field, is never merely a variable of subjectivity or a function of personal identity. The link between enjoyment and the superego also brings to light an aspect of racism that is frequently overlooked. Racism is not merely—as much psychological thinking may have it—a set of affective responses, a collection of inter-subjective relations, or a composite array of attitudes and prejudices. Racism pivots also on a series of ideological values which, crucially, involve a potent “moral” dimension. Such an idea is overlooked in popular impressions of racism as ignorance, unfounded hate, or intolerance. While racism may indeed be all of these things, it is also a type of indignation; it entails the impetus to blame and punish; and it involves a sense of laws, of norms and ideals that have been violated. This is something we can perhaps credit Adorno et al. (1950) for intuiting in their theory of the authoritarian personality: racism often takes the form of a distorted and jouissance-infused (or superegoic) type of “morality.” The other is seen as flaunting traditional or cultural values; as lacking in moral values; as aberrant; as criminal. Stressing the connection between enjoyment and the law helps remind us that in Lacanian terms, the law—society itself—needs jouissance to function. Simply put: racist social structures depend upon the mobilization of jouissance. Racist enjoyment then, like other social modes of jouissance, is not merely elicited or contextualized by social structures; jouissance extends, enforces, drives those very social structures.
Derek Hook, from Pilfered pleasure: on racism as “the theft of enjoyment”
